To finish off the month of writing about The Other, I’m going to look at a phrase with which many people became familiar in 2020: “implicit bias”. As we go through life, we create biases in our heads, mostly unintentional, about people and places. Writing is a reflection of the writer, and these biases tend to come out without the writer intending it. I’m going to answer two questions: “What does this look like?” and “How do I avoid it?”

One of the most frequent places this pops up is race. Often, when white people write a main character, the character is white. This isn’t always the case, but it tends to be a fallback. I did this in Girl in Red, again, unintentionally. Even in Skwyr Court, where white characters are a minority, Roshil, arguably the main character of the six, is white. I’ve been a little more conscious of race as I write, which is far easier to do when I have complete control over the characters, but even then, there are still biases that come out.

Another bias that comes up is when characters act a certain way. Whenever I would write Elves in Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, they always ended up with an English accent. Elves often consider themselves to be above the other races, part of the higher society. My biases towards humans equates that with being English. Is that wrong? Yes, that’s why I don’t do it anymore.

How does one recognize one’s biases? Unlike other problems with writing The Other, this is one problem that research can’t necessarily solve, despite being similar to some of them. My approach is to spend a lot of time introspecting to the point where you talk to yourself more than you talk to other people. I don’t recommend this. Instead, share your writing with as many people as you can. It’s important to circulate it to people outside your normal social circle. While the idea of talking to other people may sound terrifying (at least to me), people within your usual circle may have some of the same biases that you have. That’s why diversity is important here.

Like in life, it can be hard to overcome one’s implicit biases in writing. It isn’t a matter of ignoring race, religion, etc. while writing, because if the characters were raised differently, then they should act differently. While it might seem fine to some readers, others will find it offensive. And while it’s not possible to please everyone, you shouldn’t alienate readers without intending to. When writing The Other, there are two major fixes: do your research, and ask others for their opinions. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

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© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

A strawman is a character meant to represent an entire group of people in a simplified way that is easy to criticize. Different ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations all get hit with this. Not only in fiction, but in the real world too. This is the other extreme from The Gay Best Friend, the one that’s not supposed to be good at all. People do this when they want to make a point or to spread propaganda, or when they didn’t do a lot of research because they didn’t care.

Take the movie God’s Not Dead. Like most other movies from Pure Flix, it’s Christian propaganda. Christianity is the best thing ever, and all other religions, or lack thereof, will get you killed, beaten, or cancer. The movie makes no attempt to show the merits of the other side (being not Christianity), because it’s propaganda. The lesson here is to avoid being propaganda.

But what if you’re honestly trying to represent the other side of an argument or other group different from yourself and you want to get it right? Do your research. I’ve said it with every post this month. If you’re trying to make an argument in favor of something, it’s only going to hurt you when you misrepresent the other side. It might help if all you care about is readership, but if you honestly want to make a point, it’s not going to work.

Oddly enough, God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, the third movie in that series (because of course it’s a series) did this very well. It represented non-Christians as real people with real problems, and even went as far as to admit that Christians might not be the only ones persecuted (something you never see in these types of films). There’s a scene of which I’m particularly fond during which the main character has just had a brick thrown through his window and his talking to a friend of his. Main character says, “I guess it’s different when it’s your window,” feeling that his friend doesn’t understand the persecution he’s going through. His friend replies, “I’m a black preacher in the deep south. I could build you a house all the bricks been thrown through my window.” It’s a good scene, it’s a good line, it’s good writing, and it made me care more about the message the movie was trying to send.

In the end, that’s the benefit of doing your research. If you want to make a good point, if you want to send a message, be fair to all sides. Do your research, bring it to friends or people in your community. Don’t make them into strawmen because it’s easier. It’s not right. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOther

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

When I started Girl in Red, I already had Rose worked out. It wasn’t a conscious choice to make her a girl, I just decided to. I’ve always liked the idea of Hermione, even if I don’t like how J.K. Rowling wrote her, and Luna and Rose were similar enough that I figured they’d get along great. So those were three of my main characters, all female. It gave me a lot of experience writing women, something somewhat more challenging considering I am male (Edit: No I'm not, but I've lived the life of a male, so bear with me). I didn’t have trouble with this, but I’ve seen characters clearly written by a specific gender of writer, so I know it’s not easy for everyone.

Something I’ve noticed with other writers, men and women, is that they describe the opposite sex as though the author is checking that person out. Every physical detail at which the author would be staring is described. Not only does this make me uncomfortable to read and write, but it makes the character obviously not the sex they’re supposed to be. Maybe it’s a female character doing this with a female author, but if it’s a heterosexual female character checking out another woman like this, she’s lying to herself.

That’s the biggest gotcha of writing the opposite sex that I’ve seen. The best way to avoid this: write them without considering their sex or gender. This is how we got characters like Nausicaä in Nausciaä of the Valley of the Wind, Toph and Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and most of the characters in RWBY, all of which were written primarily by men. They are treated differently than men at times, and occasionally act “girly”, but they’re so busy being awesome the rest of the time that we don’t care. Not only can you get strong female characters like this, but you don’t run the risk of it being obvious that a man wrote it.

I had two advantages that I imagine most male writers don’t have when writing female characters. The first is that my beta reader is female. She could catch anything I did blatantly wrong. The other is that stereotypical gender roles have been turned on their head in my world. My mother is the breadwinner of my house, which is why most of the families that feature in my stories have the mother as the breadwinner.

The quick fix is to not consider gender when writing. The same goes for race as well, although be warned you might still fall into a trap with either. If in doubt, find a woman in your life and ask her to proof-read it for you. It could be a cousin, a sister, your mother (who I’m sure would be happy to talk to you anyway), or a coworker. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOther

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA

“The Other” is a term given to those not like yourself. This is most often applied to black characters written by white authors. On its face, this doesn’t seem difficult. Simply write the character with little concern for the color of their skin, and add it in later. But nothing happens in isolation. Not only is there a culture within your story, but there’s one that’s going to read your story, and it is in that that the complication lies.

Take for example The Tombs of Atuan, the second book in the Earthsea series. It focuses around the character Tenar, a girl who was taken from her family at a young age and raised in The Place, a temple where they worship the Old Gods. While she is considered a religious figure in the temple, she has little in the way of rights. This was written intentionally by a female writer, but the problem comes in the means of her escape. She escapes that way of life with Ged, the main character of A Wizard of Earthsea, the previous book. As Ursula K. Le Guin herself pointed out, from one perspective, this has the message that the woman needed a man’s help to escape. The way Le Guin looked at it, they needed each other’s help, because Ged was also trapped within the tombs.

This is the tricky part of writing the other, or any character who would be marginalized in the society reading the book. No matter how you write them, you’re sending a message of some kind. If it’s that women are helpless without men around, that’s bad. On the other hand, this may be a point of growth for the character when she realizes she doesn’t need them and solves the problem on her own. This is much the case in the later books in Earthsea.

It’s a particular problem when a particular sex, race, religion, etc. is represented by a single character. That character then bears the burden of representing an entire set of people. For example, gay characters are often written as stereotypes, gay men in particular. We’ve all seen it: the lone effeminate male character who loves clothes and singing. Not only is this offensive to gay men, but to effeminate straight men who like clothes and singing and are tired of being called gay.

The best way to avoid this is to do research. There are plenty of people willing to help if you ask. People are helpful when you tell them you’re writing a character like them and you want to get it right, because chances are, they’re tired of seeing it done wrong and have a lot of opinions. I myself have a lot of opinions on writing dads, single dads in particular, programmers, smart characters in general, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and ADHD. It may be hard for some of us, but this is for your writing. It’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOther

© 2023 Sky Starlight CC BY-NC-SA